transporting, that the images of thought became embodied, and passed in vision before him.

Rapt into by-gone times, he saw a goose's egg lying in the middle of a highway, on which multitudes were travelling; indeed it was the highway to and through all nations. A careless foot happening to break this egg; instead of a gosling, out crawled a reptile, which at first sight seemed a centipedes, but increasing in bulk every moment, it presently grew up into a monster as hideous to look upon as a Hindoo divinity. It was the Demon of War in his own person, never before revealed to mortal eye. His figure might have been fashioned in mockery of the human form; his stature reached the clouds, and his shadow darkened the fairest provinces of the globe. He had two heads, which, unlike those of Janus, were placed front to front; innumerable arms, branching out all round his shoulders, sides, and chest; with legs as multitudinous, resembling in colour and motion the pillars of sand in an African whirlwind. His twin faces were frightfully dis

torted; they glared, they grinned, they spat, they railed, and hissed, and roared; they gnashed their teeth, and bit, and butted with their foreheads at each other. His arms, wielding swords, and spears, and shields, were fighting pell-mell together, each against its neighbours, right and left, so that every one had to contend with two. Often were they broken, paralyzed, or cut sheer off, yet they were quickly restored to strength and activity, or reinstated by others that sprouted from the stumps. His legs, in like manner, were indefatigably at variance, striding contrary ways, trampling on each other's toes, or kicking shins, by universal consent, in the most ludicrous and horrible manner. Beneath them the nations of Christendom were like mole-hills overturned, where the inhabitants, like ants when their nests are broken up, were running to and fro in consternation, and perishing by thousands at every change of his station.

Among the victims, however, there were some, splendidly apparelled, whose business it was to preserve the rest from being crushed

B 2

by his steps, yet who appeared to delight in the misfortunes of their fellow-creatures, whom they urged to push one another down in the path of the monster, for their own amusement. At the same time, with goads in their hands, which had been entrusted to them expressly for the purpose of keeping him off, they incessantly pricked him on, even when he would have been quiet, or have taken a different road. One of these especially distinguished himself; he was a little man, in a green coat, with an eagle's head on his shoulders, and a cock's comb upon it, of which he was prodigiously vain. This nondescript being had the power of driving the destroyer whithersoever he pleased, except across the straits of Dover.

After the giant had thus exercised himself (with one short interval of slumber) for more than twenty years, -twenty years in a reverie may be passed in twenty seconds, he appeared utterly exhausted. Suddenly, as if he had been struck with apoplexy, he lay down, and stretching himself out at full length, from the rock of Gibraltar, across the

whole continent of Europe, and beyond the arctic circle, he made his pillow of the polar ices, and fell fast asleep,- for "Peace is only the sleep of war."

The deponent in this case followed him into his slumber; for, lo! the monster dreamed; and the first thing that he dreamed was, naturally enough, that he was awake. He imagined himself standing upright upon his forest of legs, with all his arms spread out in the sky, amidst the breezes, the dew, and the sunshine of a lovely spring morning. The songs of the birds, the fragrance of the flowers, the glory of the heavens, and the beauty of the earth ravished his senses, and renovated his very existence; he found himself, notwithstanding his former consciousness, a different being, with new feelings, affections, and desires. His opposite faces, reciprocally gazing and admiring, by degrees grew so amiable in each other's eyes, that they smiled, and blushed, and kissed, and said the softest, sweetest things that his four ears had ever heard. His manifold arms

embraced, shook hands together, and exchanged rings in token of eternal reconciliation. His legs all stood up in one phalanx; all ran in one direction, and at last all fell to dancing, till he was forced to sit down upon the Alps with fatigue of enjoyment. Meanwhile this chimera of chimeras, who before had frozen the beholder of his person and performances with fresh horror at every look, grew so gentle, intellectual, and graceful, in manners, in aspect, and in form, that the present witness (though slow to believe any good of him) became as fully persuaded as he himself was, that he could be no longer the same, but that he must actually have undergone a metamorphosis as marvellous as any thing in Ovid, from the Demon of War being transformed into the Angel of Peace: and so in truth he was, for he was asleep, and "Peace is only the sleep of war."

As soon as he could divert his attention from his own altered character and novel situation, he began to look round him, and was enchanted to find, that the world had